A Small Place To Call Our Own

Simón Bolívar, an famous Latin American revolutionary, had a dream of unifying all South American countries and creating a sort of huge mega-nation such as the United States. He did not achieve his dream, but I believe that it could've been possible. Nowadays, all South American countries seem distinct and separate. However, they have many unifying qualities in terms of history and culture. There is no doubt in my mind that, if things had gone right, they could've joined together.

This is what first came into my mind when reading Jamaica Kincaid's A Small Place.  Kincaid is from a small Caribbean island called Antigua, also known as Waladli or Wadadli by its locals. Reading excerpts from her novel, I almost got goosebumps. Her opinions and her descriptions of her small island nation resonated with me, since so many of her issues she talked about can be applied almost identically to Puerto Rico.

Both Antigua and Puerto Rico are relatively small Caribbean islands that had indigenous populations and were eventually colonized by Europeans (in both cases, first by the Spanish and eventually the English, although in our case the latter didn't last long).

In her novel, Jamaica is angry and bitter, but I do not blame her for it. I don't think anyone could. You don't have to be a revolutionary in order to acknowledge the damage that was done by colonizers who decided to settle in America. They were imposing, violent, and cruel. This is not an opinion, this is a fact. It is said that time heals all wounds, and some people may be OK with forgiving and forgetting... But Kincaid is not one of those people:

[...] they should never have left their home, their precious England, a place they loved so much, a place they had to leave but could never forget. And so everywhere they went they turned it into England; and everybody they met they turned English. But no place could ever really be England, and nobody who did not look exactly like them would ever be English, so you can imagine the destruction of people and land that came from that

Are you saying to yourself, "Can't she get beyond all that, everything happened so long ago, and how does she know that if things had been the other way around her ancestors wouldn't have behaved just as badly, because, after all, doesn't everybody behave badly given the opportunity?" 

 [...] you loved knowledge, and wherever you went you made sure to build a school, a library (yes, and in both of these places you distorted or erased my history and glorified your own) 

She is angry, and rightfully so. Her writing feels refreshing to me, because I've grown up with this neutrality mentality that I apply to everything. I try to listen to all sides of any given story. I do my research. I try not to get involved in aggressive discussions unless it's absolutely necessary. Most of all, I was always told that there are right and wrong ways to express anger and discontent. 

Kincaid's frustrations are not politically correct. They are not presented in elaborate, carefully worded speeches.  They are the rants of the oppressed. When injustice is long-lasting and insidious, how can reactions to it be anything but furious? "Even if I really came from people who were living like monkeys in trees, it was better to be that than what happened to me, what I became after I met you".

A Small Place also made me consider tourism in a whole different light. Here in Puerto Rico, tourists are talked about in a humorous matter. We laugh about their big hats, expensive cameras, and American clothes. We imitate their accents when they try to pronounce El Morro o San Cristóbal. Kincaid's approach is much more sarcastic, and forces us to question the effects tourism can have on a cultural level:

What a beautiful island Antigua is-- more beautiful than any of the other islands you have seen, and they were very beautiful, in their way, but they were much too green, much too lush with vegetation, which indicated to you, the tourist, that they got quite a bit of rainfall, and rain is the very thing that you, just now, do not want, for you are thinking of the hard and cold and dark and long days you spent working in North America (or, worse, Europe), earning some money so that you could stay in this place (Antigua) where the sun always shines and where the climate is deliciously hot and dry for the four to ten days you are going to be staying there; 

This tone reminded me of a documentary I watched a couple of months ago for another English class,  titled Life and Debt. The film discussed the island of Jamaica's economic history, and contrasted colorful, fun scenes featuring tourists with locals telling stories about the country's politics. Curiously enough, upon further investigation, I noticed that Life and Debt's writer was - you guessed it - Jamaica Kincaid. 

Neither travel nor tourism are inherently bad. I would never make such an accusation. However, we must acknowledge that the essence of tourism comes from a place of superiority and privilege. In a capitalist society, tourism is the act of saying, "I can afford to temporarily leave my country and experience a quick, convenient piece of someone else's culture." Again, this isn't necessarily bad. But it is sad to think that strangers get to visit Antigua and enjoy without seeing the complex issues the island is going through. Tourists get a picture-perfect experience, while locals struggle:

[...] if you go to Antigua as a tourist, this is what you will see. If you come by aeroplane, you will land at the V. C. Bird International Airport. Vere Cornwall (V. C.) Bird is the Prime Minister of Antigua. You may be the sort of tourist who would wonder why a Prime Minister would want an airport named after him--why not a school, why not a hospital, why not some great public monument? You are a tourist and you have not yet seen a school in Antigua, you have not yet seen the hospital in Antigua, you have not yet seen a public monument in Antigua.

[...] That water--have you ever seen anything like it? Far out, to the horizon, the colour of the water is navy-blue; nearer, the water is the colour of the North American sky. From there to the shore, the water is pale, silvery, clear, so clear that you can see its pinkish-white sand bottom. Oh, what beauty! Oh, what beauty! You have never seen any thing like this. You are so excited. You breathe shallow. You breathe deep.

I love traveling. I would never want to stop myself from traveling, and I would never try to dissuade someone from enjoying a wonderful trip to another country. But we must think critically when we visit other countries. Some people might argue that the point of a vacation is to get away and relax. Personally, I don't think being aware of our surroundings and the history behind them would diminish anyone's tourist experience. If anything, it would give more depth to our understanding on the place that we're visiting, and why it is the way that it is.